Day, Caroline Bond

Variant names
Dates:
Birth 1889-11-18
Death 1948-05-05
Americans,
English,

Biographical notes:

Caroline Stewart Bond Day (CBD) was born on November 18, 1889, in Montgomery, Alabama, to Georgia and Moses Stewart. The Stewart family lived in Boston for several years. After CBD's father's death, her mother moved the family to Tuskegee, Alabama; there Georgia Stewart taught school and married John Percy Bond, a life insurance company executive. CBD adopted her stepfather's last name. Georgia and John Bond had two children together, a daughter, Wenonah Bond Logan, and a son, Jack Bond.

CBD was introduced to the field of anthropology in a class at Radcliffe taught by Earnest A. Hooton. During her senior year, she began collecting the physiological and sociological information on 'mixed' families which would lead to her publication A Study of Some Negro-White Families in the United States (1932). In her Radcliffe yearbook and alumna record, CBD listed social service work, not anthropology, as her ultimate career goal.

Following graduation from Radcliffe, CBD was employed by a variety of institutions. In 1919, she worked briefly in New York City in relief and support services for black soldiers and their families, and also served as student secretary of the National Board of the YWCA. Later that year, she moved to Waco, Texas, where she taught English at Paul Quinn College and Prairie View College in Houston, Texas. In March of 1920, Caroline Bond married Aaron Day (AD), a chemistry teacher at Prairie View College. AD had graduated from Prairie View in 1919, and served overseas during World War I. After his marriage, AD joined the National Benefit Life Insurance Company as a salesman. CBD's stepfather was also employed in this company. Because of AD's frequent promotions in the life insurance business, the Days moved several times during the next two decades. In 1922, they lived in Atlanta, Georgia, where CBD began teaching English and drama at her alma mater, Atlanta University. She remained there until 1929. During this period, she also published some essays and short stories, including the clearly autobiographical tale "The Pink Hat" (Sollors).

The research that CBD began with Hooton in her senior year at Radcliffe (1919) was "continued only in her spare time" over the next thirteen years. In 1927, when Hooton received a grant from the Bureau of International Research (BIR) of Harvard University and Radcliffe College, CBD received funds to support her research. While working in Hooton's lab, CBD collected and analyzed physiological and sociological information on 346 families, with the help of her half-sister, Wenonah Bond. This information was compiled in the 1928 manuscript "Preliminary Notes on Sociological Data for Negro-White Crosses." CBD took a leave from the project because of exhaustion and a rheumatic heart condition, and returned to Atlanta University for the 1928-29 school year. She again taught English and was said to have given the first class in anthropology ever offered at Atlanta University. With a graduate fellowship from the BIR, CBD returned to Radcliffe in late 1929 to complete her study, which culminated in the award of the Master of Arts degree in 1930

CBD's thesis was prepared for publication in the 1932 Harvard African Studies series Varia Africana. In 1930, the Days moved to Washington, D.C., where CBD taught and did social work. About this time, she befriended a young boy, Bernard (b. 1926) whom the Days adopted (although not legally). Bernard took their name as his own, becoming Bernard Aaron Day. From 1930 to 1933, CBD taught English at Howard University. In 1934, she became director of a settlement house in Washington, D.C., and AD joined the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co. In 1937, CBD was appointed general secretary of the Phyllis Wheatley Branch of the Washington, D.C., YWCA.

In late 1939, the Day family moved to Durham, North Carolina, where AD was promoted to the head office of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. CBD taught English and drama at North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University), but was forced to resign due to recurrent illness. Apart from some unpublished writings and occasional brief teaching assignments, the rest of CBD's life was devoted to, among other things, "gardening, specializing in the Hawaiian hybiscus [sic]." She read voraciously and participated in Durham's active club life. Although a stroke (with ensuing paralysis of an arm) hampered CBD's bridge-playing, a friend fashioned a stand for her out of plywood to help in dealing cards. On May 5, 1948, CBD died of cardiac complications. Her husband retired from North Carolina Mutual in 1960, two years after being elected Vice President and Agency Director. AD died in 1963.

Sources: Alexander, Adele Logan. "Day, Caroline Stewart Bond." Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Darlene Clark Hine, ed. Brookly: Carlson Publishing, 1993. Alexander, Adele Logan. Interview of 10/17/1993, with Elizabeth E. Sandager. Boris, Joseph. "Day, Caroline Stewart Bond." Who's Who in Colored America: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Persons of Negro Descent in America. v.1. New York: Who's Who in Colored America Corp. 1927. Day, Bernard. Interview of 6/23/1993 with Elizabeth E. Sandager. Dubois, W.E.B., "A Study of Some Negro-White Families in the U.S." The Crisis (December 1932) no. 2. 385. Edmonds, Helen G. Interview of 6/23/1993 with Elizabeth E. Sandager. Hooton, Earnest A. "Radcliffe Investigates Race Mixture." Harvard Alumni Bulletin. (April 3, 1930) no. 27 : 768-776. Radcliffe College Archives. Afro-American Students at Radcliffe. SC96 Ross, Hubert B. "Caroline Bond Day: Pioneer Black Female Anthropologist." Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association (November 1983). Sollors, Werner, Caldwell Titcomb and Thomas A. Underwood, eds., "Caroline Bond Day," Blacks at Harvard: A Documentary History of African-American Experience at Harvard and Radcliffe. New York: New York Univeristy Press, 1993: 177-180. Williamson, Joel. New People: Miscegenation and Mulattos in the United States. New York: Free Pres, 1980.

From the guide to the Day, Caroline Bond, 1889-1948., Papers of Caroline Bond Day, bulk, 1918-1931, (Peabody Museum Archives, Harvard University)

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